


Floodgates (recapture you, it feels like forever)

by Tseecka



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Experimental Style, M/M, POV First Person, Reunion Fic, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 05:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1845649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tseecka/pseuds/Tseecka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reunions in the next life. Different, and frightening, because what if everything has changed...but in the end, does it actually matter?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floodgates (recapture you, it feels like forever)

This. This is it.   
  
Floodgates floodgates just want them open  
  
scared.  
  
there’s something beyond that that i just can’t see.  
  
scared to push, to really really push and find it.   
  
not enough words, and everything is inadequate.  
  
emptiness.   
  
there’s a void here, where there used to be you, and you, and all the yous that in the end are only one. one and two.   
  
eight and thirteen.   
  
the answer is there, and it was once so familiar and now  
now is only emptiness, blacknessbleakness darkness  
  
welling up, something within is just welling up unspeakably, words bleed and drip like droplets of redundancy and all i want is to let it out  
  
but you don’t remember.  
do i remember?  
  
who are you?  
  
fragments, pieces of a memory and i wish i could put them all together but all there is is sadness and agony and despair, the knowing that you aren’t who i thought you were, or are you, and uncertainty to know that i don’t.  
  
tears won’t come. i don’t even know why i want to cry.  
  
it feels empty.   
this is where you used to be.  
  
I’m so empty and i need you back but  
i’m scared  
scared  
scared to reach out for you  
scared to draw you back inside  
  
what if you are only smoke?

* * *

  
It was like an eternity had passed. Standing there, in that room, the light filtering in through dusty shades, I felt as though I had lived a thousand lifetimes between that moment and the one that came before.   
  
There was no passage of time. It was instantaneous, a shift in perception. My consciousness, floating for the briefest of moments until it became grounded here. Everything felt familiar, and yet there was something indescribably different about this scene.   
  
I. Standing there, I wondered who I was. All the memories, still intact, still lodged within my soul but yet there was a taste of the unfamiliar.   
  
My soul.   
  
Something beat inside of me, as a door opened in my mind and realization came flooding in. Each thumping beat, each bass drone of my pulse almost painful to my ribs, sounded and echoed in my ears as though amplified hundreds of thousands of times. Yet all that sound, focused in, down to one tiny pinprick of audible stimuli that reassured me and scared me all at once.   
  
I was alive.   
  
There was pain. Something ripped at me, tore at my throat, and until it was released I didn’t know if it would be a sob or a scream or a roar. I’d made these sounds before, but they were empty echoes, never backed by the power of a beating heart.   
  
It was a whimper. Strange how a tiny sound can come from so much indescribable pain.   
  
And that was what was different, there, in that place where everything was familiar. Crisp white and silver walls, sharp lines and cold, cold windows. The light of the sun from outside seemed dim, and bleak. I’d seen it all before. I’d walked it through, knew it like I knew the furniture of my spartan room, could navigate it in the dark.   
  
But someone had rearranged the furniture. Cobwebs, everywhere, and a thick layer of dust that carpeted a floor long untrodden; and inside me, too, something was different.   
  
My heart sounded like a roar in my ears. And that was enough, almost, nearly enough to tell me that everything I was sure of--that I was me, and there, and time had passed in the blink of a pained, dying eye--was a lie.   
  
Until you.   
  
Your hands, limp at your sides as though you wanted to reach for something but were too scared to. Looking as though you had only blinked and found yourself elsewhere, in a place so utterly familiar and yet so different in a way that you almost couldn’t bear to understand.   
  
The same as I.   
  
And in that moment, I realized. The sight of you, with that expression, with any expression in your eyes and looking at me, caused a reaction in my soul--the soul I had, my soul, my soul and this, this was it. You were me. I saw myself reflected in your eyes. Saw the myriad of emotions flickering behind a stoic sea of blue and knew, knew as much as I knew I was breathing, and blinking, and my heart--my heart, Roxas, my heart!--was beating, that you were here. And I was here.   
  
Our pasts, dead and gone and buried in the space of an eternal whisper. The chiming of a clock. Pain and misery and anguish, that I could never, had never had the power to feel...it surged around us like the tide, like a whirlpool, a maelstrom, a hurricane. It threatened to drown me.   
  
You held out your hands.   
  
The roaring of my heart in my ears deafened me, but I saw your lips move. I saw the word they formed, the syllables shaped like letters floating silver before my eyes.   
  
An answer, the solution to the puzzle.   
  
“Axel.”  
  
The storm dissolved around us like a hundred thousand teardrops, and I made the first steps in eddies of dust.   
  
You were solid, real, heavy in my arms as you sagged forward against me, a welcome burden. My heart burst, reformed, exploded again in surges of emotion that you, only you, would ever be able to elicit from me. Our pretending, our desperate attempts to emulate the past, now slingshotted to the future and rebounding, ricocheting through my body as your nearness brought them back to light.   
  
All our mime had ever captured paled in comparison to the reality.   
  
Thunder pealed in my ears.   
  
“How?” Your lips, I saw, were chapped and dry. Millennia of disuse, of silence, the forever we had waited that had passed us by in an instant. Death and pain, then I was there, and so were you. Appearing from the shadows like ships out of a fog. Lost at sea. Finding our way home.   
  
My flame burned for you, led you here, just as your light was a beacon for me.   
  
“It doesn’t matter.”  
  
I felt your arms around me, the skin of your hands as soft against my back as a newborn child--and we were, you and I. Newly born into a world that had forgotten us twice. No meaning in that place, except for that which we gave each other. But it was enough, oh, it was more than enough. You were there, and I was there, and we were together.   
  
Your body was warm, as warm as I knew mine was, no longer deathly pale but flushed with life and vibrancy, all the brighter in that dim and dingy place. I felt your heart beating against my chest, felt my own fluttering against the fingertips you had resting on my neck, alive and real and filled with emotion. My throat swelled shut, my eyes burned, and I welcomed it.   
  
You held me tight as I sobbed, for the first time, and I held you tighter while you did the same, and your tears and choking cries became laughter. I had never heard you so relieved all at once, had never heard anything from you but cold distance and then shallow, stubborn pretense. I laughed with you as we held each other and the sun warmed our bare skin.   
  
We were there, and together, and eternity was nothing to us.


End file.
